• Pic of the Week: The Launch of Hera

    This week’s image shows a crowd in Germany watching the launch of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission on October 7, 2024. The launch itself took place from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida via a SpaceX Falcon 9. Hera’s goal is to study how binary asteroid systems like Didymos form and function…

  • Space Stories: NASA’s Probe Explorers, Finding Exoplanet Atmospheres, and an Australian Space Antenna

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Universe Today: “NASA Announces a New Class of Space Missions: Probe Explorers“ NASA has sent a whole host of spacecraft across the Solar System and even beyond. They range from crewed ships to orbit and to the Moon to robotic explorers. Among them are a range of mission classes…

  • Viewing Hurricane Milton from the ISS

    As Hurricane Milton rages toward Florida, one of the better seats to capture the drama is from the International Space Station (ISS). The image above was taken by NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick earlier today from the Dragon Endeavour window.

  • Delayed Launch of the Europa Clipper Mission

    This week we expected to see the launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper, but an approaching hurricane has again thrown NASA’s plans into the wind. The original launch was scheduled for October 10. NASA’s blog has stated the following: NASA and SpaceX are standing down from the Thursday, Oct. 10, launch attempt of the agency’s Europa…

  • Voyager 2 Still Operating, But With One Less Instrument

    Last week, NASA announced its decision to turn off one of Voyager 2’s scientific instruments to save energy. The plasma science instrument is now silent. It was used to measure the amount of plasma, or electrically charged atoms, as well as the direction it is flowing. The same instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working in…

  • How Do Astronauts Vote While in Orbit?

    Earlier this week, NASA issued an article on how astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) can vote in the upcoming election. Yes, they need to make arrangements like anyone planning to be out of town, but we have a least two astronauts (from Boeing) who did not plan to be on the station during…

  • Outside Group with Political Agenda Taxing NASA

    As if things could not get more troublesome, the Heritage Foundation appears to be doing a lot of dirty work on behalf of the Trump campaign to obtain internal conversations by NASA employees. According to Reuters, the focus of the campaign against NASA appears to be looking for comments involving Donald Trump and Elon Musk.…

  • Pic of the Week: Spacewalk Outside the Chinese Space Station

    This week’s image is from the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). It shows taikonaut Li Cong on a spacewalk outside China’s Tiangong station on July 3, 2024.  The space station was first launched in April 2021 and has been permanently crewed since June 2022. The current crew, called Shenzhou 18, consists of Commander Ye Guangfu,…

  • Study Findings: Detection of Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Peroxide on the Stratified Surface of Charon with JWST

    Nature Communications abstract of the study findings: Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, has been extensively studied, with research focusing on its primitive composition and changes due to radiation and photolysis. However, spectral data have so far been limited to wavelengths below 2.5 μm, leaving key aspects unresolved. Here we present the detection of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen…

  • Space Quote: Can China Win the Lunar Race This Time?

    “As the U.S. has flailed, China and its partners have marched forward, notching one success after another. There is no reason to believe they will not be first to send a crewed mission to the lunar south pole, where only a half dozen or so promising regions exist to safely land. Depending on how the…